Through the 75 years or more that mosquitoes have been the subject of an intensive scrutiny by physicians, entomologists, sanitary engineers, mosquito abatement personnel and many others, the description and identification of mosquitoes have been seriously hampered by the presence in the literature of two or more terms (sometimes as many as a dozen) for the same anatomical feature. The end goal of this project is to produce a glossary of terms used in mosquito taxonomy so constructed that a worker can quickly and accurately determine what structure any term applies to. It is planned to accomplish this by (1) collecting and detailing all terms previously applied to the sclerotized structure of each life stage of mosquitoes, (2) selecting an appropriate term for each such structure through an integrated consideration of mosquito comparative anatomy, structural homology, and scientific literature, (3) defining each selected term in the broadest possible phylogenetic sense but at least totally inclusive for the family Culicidae (Order Diptera), (4) illustrating each named structure, (5) relating all synonymic terms to their proper antecedent terms, and finally (6) consolidating all terms (both suggested standard terms and synonyms) into an alphabetically-arranged glossary for publication. The comparative anatomical studies will be done both with conventional light and scanning electron microscopy. From collections belonging to the principal investigator and available from colleagues, comparative studies will include structural examinations of representatives of all subfamilies and most genera of mosquitoes.